Chapter 882 Four Pillars: Depths of the Apparatus
Chapter 882 Four Pillars: Depths of the Apparatus
“Wait… huh?”
Registering the words that left Vaughn’s mouth, Valyr was left confused once more as he did not understand how the man had gotten to this point.
“Why me, though?” asked the young man for clarification. “Don’t you have more than enough strength to kill the two Arbiters in your current state?”
Hearing that, Vaughn nodded. “That’s true. If I were to do it, it would have already been done.”
“Then… why me?”
“Because those two know me,” replied Vaughn, his expression becoming serious. “And I don’t mean that in a way that they remember what I looked like at the end of the Great Cataclysm.”
“When I say they know me… I mean it in a way where they more or less know everything about me.”
At those words, Valyr went silent for a bit, trying to wrap his head around the situation.
Eventually, the young man had a rough idea of why Vaughn was asking him to take over the task that he had started, nodding in slight understanding.
“By everything… you mean…?”
“My current level, my current class, my current species, those two know of it,” said Vaughn with a bit of nonchalance. “Not only that, but they know my skills, the concepts I’ve comprehended, even the skills that I’ve obtained and leveled up along the way.”
“Wait… how did they figure that out?” asked Valyr, returning back to a state of not understanding what was going on. “Did they enlist the help of an information broker or something?”
“If they did, they wouldn’t have gotten that much detailed information from me.” Vaughn bitterly smiled as he shook his head. “But no. They obtained it from something I took for granted. Something I only found out to have that kind of power later on in my life.”
“The Authority stat.”
“The Authority stat?” murmured Valyr to himself, recalling what the man had told him about it.
Vaughn nodded in response. “It’s because of that stat that they know everything they’d need to know about me.” “As I’ve told you before, the Authority stat is a stat that directly allows you to access parts of the system that wouldn’t normally be accessible.”
“The higher the Authority stat, the more of the system’s features you could access,” the man added.
Though, not long after, the man’s expression turned slightly grim. “However, there’s also something else to the Authority stat that I should’ve known from the start.”
“Something that I only found out after leaving Veldanyr for good.”
At those words, Valyr raised his eyebrow in curiosity, wondering what other side such a stat had.
Unsurprisingly, the young man was not ready for what came out of Vaughn’s mouth after that.
“In exchange for gaining access to normally inaccessible parts of the system, you become a part of the system itself. You become a part of the Apparatus.”
Seeing that Valyr had become confused due to his words, Vaughn decided to explain in more detail.
“Think of the Apparatus as a large class guild, while those who have the Authority stat are a part of that guild.”
“As we both know, class guilds collect basic information on their members as a way to keep track. With that in mind, the Apparatus takes it one step further, collecting all of the information on the person that has the Authority stat.”
“Unlike class guilds, where we can exert the influence of others to omit that kind of information, the Apparatus does not care about such things whatsoever. It just collects information.” The man shrugged. “It’s the System, after all.”
“And what does that have to do with the two Arbiters knowing everything about you?” asked Valyr, finally beginning to understand the situation once more.
“The higher the Authority stat, the more of the system you could access.” Vaughn wryly smiled. “I’m pretty sure you don’t need more hints than that, right?”
Hearing the man’s words, the gears in Valyr’s mind turned for a bit before understanding what he meant by that.
Nodding, he then looked at Vaughn with a slightly grim expression. “So… you’re saying that, since they have a higher Authority stat than you…”
“They have access to all of my information if they wanted to, correct.” Vaughn nodded in agreement. “Think of those two as elders of the class guild, while I’m just a slightly higher-ranking member within the guild.”
“There’s certain ranks of access to the Apparatus depending on how high your Authority stat is, actually.”
“Okay. Now I get it.” Going over Vaughn’s explanation in his mind once more, Valyr nodded in understanding as he laid out his thought process. “Because I don’t have the Authority stat, the two wouldn’t have information on me, which means I have an advantage over them in combat.”
“Aside from that, the reason why you chose me is because I’m an Anomaly, someone whose body is basically similar to the humans of the past. Compared to anyone else in Veldanyr, I would have far greater strength at the same rank.”
“That’s pretty much it.” Vaughn nodded with a faint smile.
“For some reason, I feel like you’ve set this whole thing up before I was even born… or well, before this body was even born,” said Valyr in response, causing the man to let out a bit of laughter.
“Now that I think about it, it does kind of seem that way,” said Vaughn. “However, even if you hadn’t come around, I would’ve still passed on the ownership of the inheritance to someone else.”
“Of course, they’ll be the one finishing the task that I’ve started.”
Nodding in response, Valyr then asked Vaughn on how soon he wanted the task to be completed if he were to do it.
Hearing that the man did not mind him taking as much time as he needed to complete it, the young man agreed to finish what Vaughn had started, but only after he was done with the other plans he had yet to enact.
Pondering in silence for a bit as he thought over what he had to do, Valyr soon found a problem with the task he was given. “Wait a second… I think there’s a problem with what you want me to do.”
“What is it?” Vaughn raised his eyebrow in curiosity.
“The Shard of Defiance,” replied Valyr. “Wouldn’t it give me a point in the Authority stat if I were to reach its requirements?”
“Ah, right.” The man nodded in understanding. “Yeah, that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“But wouldn’t those Arbiters have full access to my information since I would have the Authority stat by then?”
“Normally, they would.” Vaughn nodded in agreement, only to grin soon after. “But the Shard of Defiance isn’t called that for nothing.”
“To cut things short, let’s just say that it contains something… special.”
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